Taking a page out of the Orlando Magic (and before them Denver Nuggets) playbook, when major talks stall out New Orleans Hornets GM Dell Demps says he is in no rush to make a decision.

Chris Paul trade talks between the Hornets and Los Angeles Clippers have stalled out, according to David Aldridge at NBA.com. He says that the hang up is the usual — the league wants both Eric Gordon and Minnesota’s unprotected first round pick, the Clippers don’t want to give up both (plus Chris Kaman, Eric Bledsoe and Al-Farouq Aminu). The Times-Picayune says the Hornets have backed off their demands for Gordon. Other reports say Mo Williams and Trevor Ariza are now part of the talks.

And that’s just the Clippers side of the equation. Remember the Lakers are trying to put together a three-team deal to lure Paul. The third team would provide younger players and picks that the league seems to covet in any deal for Paul.

Who knows exactly what is going on? With this trade we’d need Fox Mulder to help us figure out what is the truth and what is some league-wide conspiracy concocted by the Smoking Man.

Hornets’ general manager Dell Demps says New Orleans won’t be rushed into dealing Chris Paul and that there’s no timeline for a trade.

Demps says there remain “many options” for the NBA-owned Hornets to pursue in trading their four-time All-Star point guard and that the team and league will be diligent in “looking for the best one.” Demps says he’s working “hand-in-hand” with NBA Commissioner David Stern and has not been discouraged or frustrated by the length of time it has taken to reach a deal that satisfies all parties.

If he’s not frustrated he’s a robot.

That said, this process may slow down for a little bit. And come the start of the season Paul may still be a Hornet.

No, we’re not doubting the work, the qualifications or even the input.

But it used to be that the general manager essentially stood as the final word on all things basketball, if only because he was the one entrusted to see all, hear all, know all.

Yet in the past few weeks, it has become clear that Dell Demps hardly is the final word on all things basketball in New Orleans. Far from it.

In Los Angeles, Mitch Kupchak hardly could have viewed dumping Lamar Odom to Dallas for a piddling draft choice as a basketball move. But these days, who knows what those wacky Buss kids are up to?

In Dallas, Mark Cuban has long had final say on all matters personnel, with Donnie Nelson as much facilitator as closer.

During the free-agency free-for-all of 2010, owners had as much influence in those meetings with LeBron, Wade, Bosh and Stoudemire as their leading team executives.

And while Neil Olshey has been prudently proactive with the Clippers’ bid for Chris Paul, it still comes down to the ultimate whims of Donald T. Sterling (who once vetoed a trade with the Heat for Glen Rice because of a dream he had about Danny Manning; we kid you not).

The one thing the lockout made clear is that there largely is a new breed of owner in the NBA, an owner with more at stake than the previous generation. These are not hobbyists or investors, these are hands-on types who have their hands in just about every aspect of the operation.

At season’s end, the league again will award Executive of the Year.

We’re just not sure at that very moment that an owner won’t swoop in and go, “No, that’s mine.”

Ira Winderman writes regularly for NBCSports.com and covers the Heat and the NBA for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. You can follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/IraHeatBeat.

Last Friday, David Stern — acting as some amalgam of both owner of the New Orleans Hornets and commissioner of the NBA — put the kibosh on a trade that would’ve sent Chris Paul to the Lakers, brought Luis Scola, Kevin Martin, and Lamar Odom to the Hornets, and shipped Pau Gasol to the Rockets. Those players would have significantly altered the futures of all three franchises involved in the deal, but thanks to Stern’s controversial decision, things have developed along a different timeline.

The ripple effects of Stern’s veto have been incredibly far-reaching, and upset the delicate balance of an already furious free agency period. Behold: an attempt to capture the 10-team, 28-player insanity that has resulted from Stern’s decision to block the Chris Paul blockbuster:

David Stern and the league painted itself into a corner here by trying to be rational — if we learned one thing from the lockout it is that the NBA owners are not rational.

Stern let Hornets GM Dell Demps try to work out the best deal for his team. After talking to anyone and everyone that called, Demps came up with a three-team deal that would have netted the Hornets Lamar Odom, Luis Scola, Kevin Martin and a draft pick for Paul. That’s not a bad haul — those are guys that can make the team competitive now and be good trade chips going forward as the team will start to rebuild. This was the first move of many in the Hornets rebuilding.

But all some owners saw was Chris Paul going to the Lakers.

We just missed a couple months of the NBA season because Stern was telling us small market owners didn’t want to just keep sending their big stars to big markets like some kind of glorified farm system. “Competitive balance” was the owners’ mantra through this entire labor dispute.

Those owners saw the trade as a black eye and pressured the league to kill it.

What they did was make things worse. And made themselves look foolish in the process.

The league denies this is how things went down, with league spokesman Mike Bass saying the owners never discussed it as a group and the decision to kill the trade was made for “basketball reasons.”

Wrong. Demps made the trade he did for basketball reasons. He looked at about 100 trade options teams put before him and selected (and helped create) the one that he thought helped his team the most. He wanted to trade Paul for basketball reasons — he watched what happened to the Nuggets last year and didn’t want that to happen to his team.

But the league killed the deal anyway. Good luck finding a better one. Or any deal for that matter.

And while we’re at it — this Pau Gasol trade was a bad one, but Pau Gasol for Kwame Brown was OK? Really?

“Competitive balance” was always smokescreen, a myth that could not be obtained by any new Collective Bargaining Agreement. No system can save bad owners from themselves. Put simply, smart management wins in the NBA, and by smart management we mean smart drafting to start. You can win and be profitable in a small market, as San Antonio and Oklahoma City have and are proving, as the Memphis Grizzlies showed us last playoffs.

But the biggest stars will always gravitate toward the brightest lights. Los Angeles, New York and Miami have inherent advantages as a destination that Indianapolis cannot match. Small markets can overcome that, if they are managed well. The Hornets were not for years — thanks again Gorge Shinn! — and now Demps has to clean up the mess.

But the league wouldn’t let him do his job. They listened to whiny owners.

But two league sources confirmed after the story broke that Paul’s agent, Leon Rose, never made the request to the Hornets.

“It is just rumors; you can’t control it,’’ Paul said. “It’s always going to happen, and it’s part of the game. I’m just happy to be back with my team.’’

First, Paul likes New Orleans, he is very involved in the community there. This is not about the city or the fans. And Paul may have to play some or all of a season there, so he is going to say this is not him and that he just wants to play basketball and all that. He has to. That is part of the game.

This is not about the Big Easy. This is about Paul wanting to win and seeing a team without an owner and without direction in a small market. It’s hard to see how the Hornets become competitive soon.

Neither Paul nor his agent made direct contact with Hornets GM Dell Demps and say, “trade me.” That’s not how this works, people leave themselves plausible deniability. It’s done though an intermediary but the message is clear nonetheless. At some point Demps and Paul (and his agent) will talk directly, face-to-face. Don’t expect the message to really change.

But that’s not what they will say to the press. It will be CP3 saying he loves New Orleans and he just wants to play basketball. It will be Demps saying the team’s priority is to sign Paul to an extension. It is a dance they will do for as long as this thing plays out. But Paul is leaving New Orleans and that is not changing, it’s just a matter of how and where.